Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Why college hoops is the best of the major "amateur" sports

1) There is no mythical national champion. There's no debate about who the champ is. No one with 'credentials' gets left out in college basketball.

2) Rankings make more sense. Recent example- Auburn is ranked ahead of Arkansas in the polls despite getting blasted by the Hogs at home and both having one loss.

3) More teams have a realistic chance to win it all. Every year in college football there's about 10 teams that realistically have a chance to win the MNC. In college hoops you can expand that to 25 teams. Heck, Florida was preseason unranked last year and we know how that turned out. Try being preseason unranked in college football and have thoughts of a MNC.

4) Seats... all seats are chairbacks indoors. College football... not so much.

Why college hoops trumps college baseball

1) DING! The fingernails on the chalkboard sound of an aluminum bat. It's like playing wiffleball with newspaper stuffed in the wifflebat.

2) The best players 18-22 are already in the minor leagues. There are exceptions, but for the most part I'm right. That makes college baseball the equivalent of watching Class A baseball. Someone counter with the NBDL... I'll counter that with no one watches that anyways. (g)

Some of this is tongue in cheek, some of this is not... I'll let you decide.

3 comments:

Here's another one. March Madness in general. During bowl season, who cares if Southern Miss plays Boise State other then their fans. When you have Creighton against St. Mary's in a first round game, it is most likely to be very worthwhile to watch.

Football is more fun to watch on television. Basketball is more fun to watch in person.

Basketball is a much more exciting game requiring better conditioning and more athleticism from all of its players. (Bear Bryant explained how the average football player actually plays no more than about 5 minutes per game, but Ron Steele went full speed for more than 40 minutes per SEC game last year.) There is no way to hide a mediocre or poor player on the basketball court. You might be able to work around him, but everyone in the gym will know who he is and what his tendencies are.

From a fan's perspective there is no comparison between the two games. The fans are right on top of the action. Everyone has a good seat. The fans tend to be knowledgeable and interactive in college basketball arenas and actively endeavor to invoke their capacity to influence the game.

My normal seats are in the 20th row, and I sometimes can make myself heard from there. When I've sat with my friends within 6 rows of the court, I can assure you that every unfavorable official or show-boating visiting player or coach understood every word I said to him.

More important still is the impact the home crowd can have on the home team. I love it when the crowd stands and cheers our defense as the shot clock winds down toward zero. Even if the visitors hit a big bucket before the buzzer, the crowd remembers that the next trip down and does all they can to encourage the men in crimson to hunker down on defense.